The Town of Lincoln, MA - Library Trustees

II. Patty Levy of the Friends of the Lincoln Library made a presentation about the Brunch for Books they are planning for October 22, 2006, at 11AM. It will be catered by La Provence (with wine!) and the auction will be managed by Karen Keene of Skinner's. Our children's librarians are involved; they'll be making masks and doing readings. The Lincoln-Sudbury Jazz Ensemble will play downstairs and the Ancient Mariners (who were on our fabulous 4th of July float) will play upstairs. The Library will be closed until 2 or 3 PM that Sunday.

"The only town holiday that the library will not observe is the Friday after Thanksgiving (when the library is open) which will be a floating holiday for library employees. The 1/2 day floating holiday for 2002 will be for 1/2 day on Christmas Eve. This 1/2 day floating holiday will be reassessed annually. Also, the library will be closed from now on, as in the past four years, at 1:00pm on the Wed. before Thanksgiving, as decreed by the Trustees."

The committee has been occupied with 6 different projects over the summer. On the carpet, a decision is almost made. The slate roofing is finished, though we haven't been billed. Although there is a crack in some coping which must be epoxy-injected, there will still be more than $200K left to return to the Community Preservation Commission. For the ADA hardware on the front doors, bids are in the $3K range. Three firms were interviewed for the windows, and The Preservation Partnership at $25K was chosen.

For sprinkler work, the RDK firm was chosen. We'll do the work in pieces, in different fiscal years, because the total of $360K is so expensive and also to avoid having to close the entire library for a month. We shall put additional sensors in the attic, rather than sprinklers, but sprinkler the basement and sub-basement.

In terms of Capital Planning "politics," Pugh asked whether insurance rates would go down after all this sprinkler work. If so, it could help us politically. Sugar replied that no building in town has a fire suppression system, not even Bemis Hall or Old Town Hall. Apsler noted that $150K is not huge compared to our former requests, and Sugar remarked that fire suppression for the vault is only $10K. N.B. We have already had 2 fires in the sub-basement and one didn't even trip the alarm. The new FACP (fire alarm control panel) will be addressable and more sophisticated than the existing.

It will be necessary to add a fire pump because the town water pressure is insufficient. The Trustees voted to propose $100K ($95K plus the escalation factor) for FY2010 to fund this fire pump and the attic dry system (which also benefits the floor below).

For FY2011, we'll propose items 7, 8 and 9 of the fire suppression plan for $101,800; for FY2012, two air conditioners for $200K plus escalation. (If the air conditioning breaks before then we'll have to ask for a Reserve Fund transfer.)

The Vault project may require $420K, but Sugar hopes it will be only $250K. The Town has a significant problem with mold in the archival materials it houses so it should be glad to share in vault expenses. Our vault will essentially be a fireproof box. We shall propose $420K to Capital Planning for FY2009, but hope to come in at less.

Two excellent reports were prepared by Myles showing all the repairs projected and accomplished for the Library since we embarked on our current efforts, one for projects funded by the Capital Plan in various years and the other for work funded by the Community Preservation Act (CPA). They show the status of repairs as of September 14, 2006, including monies spent and unspent.

The Friends’ float was a big hit at the 4th of July parade. The banner on the front of the float stated, “Lincoln Library Goes 4th in the Spirit of Sharing.” An advertisement for the Brunch for Books event that will raise money for rebuilding the New Orleans Public Library faced the rear of the float. The Ancient Mariners played continuously during the parade route. Diana Abrashkin and Jacquelin Apsler represented the library trustees and Barbara Myles represented the library staff. Several Friends of the Lincoln Library rode on the float including Patty Levy, Rayna Caplan, Susan Taylor, Elizabeth Cherniak, Avram Kalisky, Henry Haroian, and Esther Shapiro. Special thanks to Buck Creel, who drove the float.

The members of the Write Stuff writers’ group continues meeting twice each month. Henry Haroian has the honor of being the first author to publish a book since this group was formed last year. Henry is promoting his book and it is for sale at the library and the Council on Aging. Henry is donating all of the proceeds from the sale of his book to the library and the Council on Aging.

The Photo Share group met for the first time in July. The new LCD projector that the Friends purchased makes it possible to display computer images of digital photographs on a screen. Twenty five people attended the first meeting and they were interested in meeting every month. The library has books on a variety of subjects that are of interest to this group including photography, nature, animals, digital imaging software and field guides.

A new Internet service called “NextReads” began in July. NextReads provides 20 adult topical reading lists. The lists contain a mixture of new and old titles. Lincoln staff can edit these lists and add local holdings. Patrons sign up or opt-in to any (or all) of the lists they find interesting. Once they have signed up for the subscription service, each reading list is sent to patrons as a newsletter on a schedule. When the newsletters arrive in patrons’ email boxes, they can click on a book they want to read. A search is automatically made of the Minuteman Library Network’s catalog. If the book is in the Minuteman database, the patron can place a request on the book immediately. We need to promote this service more aggressively in the coming months.

“What’s Buzzin’ @ Your Library” was the theme of this year’s summer children’s reading program. On June 27th the Children’s Department staff ran a reading club kick-off and ice cream party. The weather was good so the party was held outdoors near the original entrance to the library. When children signed up for the reading club, they received reading journals, bookmarks, pencils, erasers, and stick on tattoos. Ed Popielarczyk made balloon creations, painted children’s faces and ran his bubble machine.

Materials for the “What’s Buzzin’ @ Your Library” reading program were provided by the Massachusetts Regional Library System. The Friends of the Library provided funds for performers throughout the summer reading program. This year’s incentive to read books was called “Read to Feed!” and supported the Heifer Project. Heifer International works to help end world hunger and poverty with animal donations to families in need all over the world. For every book read (or read to) a child had the opportunity to vote toward a pig, goat or llama. The Friends donated money to Heifer International to purchase the winning animal (the llama) for a needy family.

The Children’s librarians really got excited about bugs. They had an ant farm and incubated butterflies. A woman brought bugs (some very big bugs!) into the library for children to see close up during her “Creepy Crawlies” and “Bugology” programs. The following week a storyteller came to the library for a program called “Insect Comedy.”

Ruth Wales is working at the library as part of the tax work off program. Her current project is to index the files of historic houses in greater detail. The files are labeled by the name of the original owners of the houses. This makes it difficult to answer questions about the house at 100 Main Street, for example, if you are not a Lincoln historian. No re-filing of vault materials will be done. Instead, additional information will be added to the finding aids that were created by Bill Carroll, the archivist who organized the materials in the vault.

Reference staff answered at least 948 documented reference questions during June, July, and August 2006. This compares to 961 documented reference questions over the same period last year. Over the summer Jeanne worked with summer intern, Andrew Loof, to rearrange the reference shelves to accommodate new purchases. Jeanne went to a PowerPoint training class at New Horizons, which was funded by the Metrowest Massachusetts Regional Library System. The class will help her prepare a presentation she is giving at the New England Library Association Conference in October called, “I’ve got Google, why do I need the library?”

Over the summer the Town’s Information Technology Director, Chuck Miller, purchased 16 new computers to replace library computers that were no longer under warranty. Lisa Rothenberg worked with the IT consultant to get all of the software installed on the new PCs.

The minimum system requirements for PCs running the new version of the library’s integrated software system (Millennium) include a Pentium 4, Xeon, or equivalent processor (2.0 Ghz) or faster and at least 512 MB RAM. If other applications will be run on the PCs, additional RAM is needed. These requirements made it necessary for the library to get new PCs. Chuck Miller will deploy some of the library’s old PCs to other Town departments and reserve others to replace broken PCs, which are no longer under warranty.

At the end of each fiscal year, Lisa closes out the accounts on the Millennium acquisitions module and rolls over any outstanding orders to the new fiscal year’s account. This is an involved process that must be performed in a precise sequence.

AC3, the air conditioner for the first floor of the Preston building stopped running in July due to a bad fuse on a three-phase feed. In early August, the temperature in the Gund building would not drop below 80 degrees. The cause was a broken service switch for the condenser was stopping the condenser before the building temperature matched the thermostat setting. In September we were still having problems cooling the Gund building. This time the problem was a burnt out condenser fan motor.

As of July 20, this project was substantially completed. Remaining site work was completed quickly but the final application for payment did not arrive until the middle of September. No certified payrolls accompanied the application for payment, which prevented the architect from authorizing payment.

The Building Committee held meetings over the summer with Karle Packard of Red Hawk Studios to develop the schematic design for a new vault. We considered various options for air conditioning and apportioning space. I met with Susan Brooks, Lincoln’s Town Clerk, to discuss ways to work together to preserve and provide access to Town records. Approximately 25% of the materials in the library’s vault are Town records and the expanded vault will be able to accommodate additional Town records.

The Town’s phone conversion from Verizon to Conversent was completed in late August. The new phone line did not arrive soon after the conversion so I contacted. Anita Scheipers, Lincoln’s Assistant Town Administrator, and she gave me the contact information to our account representative at Conversent. Before Conversent could add the phone line to its network, Verizon had to delete it from it’ network. This work was completed during September.

The design phase of the library’s window replacement project was put out to public bid in July. The submissions were reviewed and ranked by the Building Committee. The top three firms: The Preservation Partnership, Gale Associations and Russo Barr were interviewed in August. Negotiations with the top firm, The Preservation Partnership were completed in August and Max Ferro, the owner of The Preservation Partnership, began work in September.

Over the summer Ellen and I met with the following representatives from Lincoln’s Disability Commission: Kathy Deickler, Stephen Dyson, and Rob Loud and four sales representatives from automatic door vendors. Kathy, Stephen, Rob, Ellen and I met with the first sales representative in May. We learned that it is possible to retrofit the existing doors with automatic closers. The salesman demonstrated how the doors would work on the library’s entry doors and explained available features, such as sequencing the doors so that the outer entry door opens immediately but the inner entry door opens a few seconds later. We agreed that all four doors should not open at the same time because it would allow a great deal of cold air into the library during the winter and hot air into the library during the summer, which would drive up the library’s utility bills. Instead, only two of the doors will be retrofitted with automatic door closers.

Scott LeClair, a principal engineer at Fitzemeyer and Tocci (F&T) drew specifications for bringing the elevator’s smoke vent up to the building code in December 2005. It has been very difficult to find a company that would consider taking on this job. A number of different trades are involved plus a technician from the elevator company needs to be on site to stop the elevator and give the workmen access to the elevator shaft. I finally received a price quote from Fraser Engineering for $20,000!

Originally, it seemed as though this job would be very small. A piece of Plexiglas was covering the smoke vent, which was a safety hazard. Smoke has to have a way to get out of the building during a fire. Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger (SGH) simply told us to remove the Plexiglas from the vent. We did not understand that removing the Plexiglas would cause the elevator to malfunction during the winter. Nor did we know at that time that the vent at the bottom of the elevator shaft was blocked. In short, this project is now a capital plan request for FY 2008.

Now that the new slate roof is installed on the Gund building, the painting and plaster repairs that were recommended in SGH’s January 2004 facility review can now proceed. Kathy Rushby is getting price quotations from three painting companies. This work should be finished before the end of the calendar year.

During the process of getting price quotes for increasing the size of the discharge pipes, we received different opinions from various plumbers about the optimal size of the discharge pipes. This was confusing so the Trustees agreed that we should find out what the increase of discharge would be if the pipes were increased from two inches to three inches in diameter. I contacted Scott LeClair at F&T to find out if he could answer this question. He asked me to send him a drawing of the pipes so that he could calculate the increase in water flow. Andrew Loof and I measured the pipes and made a drawing of them for Scott. He determined that if the pipes were increased to three inches, the rate of flow would double. The next step is getting three written price quotes for this work.

The Building Committee had ongoing meetings with Anita Sandberg, the Interior Design Director for Gorman Richardson Architects, over the summer to select carpets for the Reference Room and Farrar Room. I learned that it is very difficult to find a carpet that can match all of the different colors in the library!

In the month of May, the design phase was put out for public bid, the top four firms (RDK Engineering, FirePro, SAR Engineering, and Cronis, Liston, Nangle & White) were interviewed by the Building Committee, and RDK Engineering was selected as the number one firm. Over the summer, Rand Refrigeri, a fire engineer, led the RDK Engineering staff through the schematic phase of this project. RDK Engineering delivered the schematic design on September 18. The project is now on hold while the library requests additional funding to complete the design phase and move on to the construction phase.

Once again Nancy Henderson beautified the library’s entrance with large pots of flowers. She weeded and pruned the plants and shrubs around the library. She also planted several shade loving plants on the Bedford Road side of the Link building, which makes that area visually appealing.

Thanks to Hannah Gavalis and Andrew Loof for working at the library over the summer. They both worked at the library last summer so they were ready to begin work with only a little refresher training. Over the summer they helped librarians with special projects and worked at circulation desks when permanent staff members were on vacation. It was great to have them at the library this summer!